In a conventional branch of a bank, each teller has a workstation connected to a machine for dispensing, accepting or recycling physical tokens of monetary value (“cash”), typically in the form of bank notes and/or coins. Such a machine may be referred to as a teller cash dispenser (TCD), teller cash acceptor (TCA) or teller cash recycler (TCR), the latter being able to both dispense and accept cash and to re-dispense accepted cash to other customers. Each machine is a peripheral connected to only one or perhaps two teller workstations, each connection being a dedicated, one-to-one physical connection in the form of a cable such as a serial cable.
Each teller's work station may also be separately connected to a core bank system via a network of the branch. The core system is where the data of the customers' bank accounts are held. To process a transaction such as dispensing cash, the teller may use a dual keyed model whereby he or she first uses the workstation to key in the transaction from the workstation to the core system, and if the core system approves the transaction it returns an approval to the teller's work station. The teller then uses the workstation to separately key in the same transaction from the workstation into the peripheral cash-handling machine in order for the workstation to control the machine to complete the transaction. This way the cash-handling machine is kept isolated from the wider network. Alternatives to the dual keyed model include screen scraping, graphical integration or full integration.
TCDs, TCAs, TCRs or other kinds of machine may also be able to handle other physical (typically paper) financial documents such as cheques, bills, invoices, debit forms, account transfer forms and/or bank passbooks. Other examples include deposit slips, payments documents, savings withdrawal tickets, cheque deposit slips, savings deposit slips, and/or other documents used as proof of deposit at a financial institution. Workstations associated with such machines may also provide other functionality like access to account balances or other records.
Traditionally in the highly security-conscious banking environment, a given member of bank staff has a single, fixed set of permissions. For instance a teller may only be allowed access to basic functionality like accepting and dispensing cash, while a supervisor may have access to a higher level which includes the basic functionality plus additional functionality like access to sensitive records. To obtain a different level of access to the system, log in is performed with a different user ID and password.